Hollywood has been blamed for many things;
from causing mindless violence to abdominal cramps from laughing too much at
Adam Sandler and Wayan Brothers films.
But the greatest injustice Hollywood
has suffered is from the mistaken idea that the entertainment industry and even
the print media such as magazines promote dangerous body images, and in turn,
bulimia, anorexia and orthorexia. This
crime is perpetrated only by nutritionists.
Line up 100 and you will get 100 different ideas. They can't even agree amongst themselves, so
what chance do we have in getting the correct advise on how to eat right?
Yes, many of the actresses are
svelte. Yes, many models are paper thin
and it has been said that as much as six could feed on a single doughnut. But this is not the fault of the movie or
even the magazine industries. The fault
should rest squarely on the metabolism of the actresses and models that appear
in movies and magazines... and the diet industry.
Not to forget, the inability of
some people to take responsibility for their actions.
The metabolism of actresses is
blameless, though the attacks against them still continue. Many of you will know someone who can eat
their weight in food, and never gain weight.
But is it all metabolism? No,
it’s what they eat, how they eat it, and their amount of activity.
In this article I hope to dispel
some diet myths and present to you the true secrets of the eating habits of Hollywood stars, the look of which many of their fans
aspire to.
If we look at the diet industry,
what do we find? Calorie-counting and
kilojoules. Pseudo-nutritionists telling
us that fat is bad, carbohydrates are good, and protein intake should be almost
nonexistent.
“Okay”, you say. “Why are we to believe the author? After all, isn’t he is an actor,
screenwriter, and producer for the motion picture industry. It’s understandable he’d go in to bat for his
industry and win one for the Gipper.
Not true.
Proper nutrition is the hallmark
of the film industry. Actors, actresses,
or even screenwriters do not do their best work undernourished. They all get fed on set by the caterer – and
what they cook is prepared under the eagle-eye of a respected dietitian who
knows the science of food and the amount of vitamins and minerals required in
the food for a healthy diet – and healthy performers that are able to work at
100% capacity.
There are numerous phenomena
observed when a performer is undernourished, and trained dietitians, caterers,
and medical staffs on set are well aware of these.
Here are just a few:
How To Eat Like A Human
Vegetarians die early and
vegetarian women have the highest number of children with birth defects. They also have the highest incidence of
osteoporosis, cancer, anemia, and muscle loss.
This unfortunately is a medical and observable fact.
The major element sadly lacking
in the diet of vegetarians is protein.
The best source of protein is meat.
Protein builds muscle, bones, arteries, blood, and brain cells. Your nervous system and your life depend on
it.
Carbohydrates build nothing but
fat. And we wonder why the majority of
Americans are morbidly obese. When they
go swimming they are a danger to shipping, but well-meaning marine
conservationists continue to attempt to push them back out to sea when they
swim back to shore.
Early last century (the 20th
century) one of the first medical dietitians, Dr Hay, made nutrition and
food-eating his life’s work. He found
that the best diet consisted of a minimum of 60% protein and a maximum of 40%
carbohydrates - an acceptable allocation for optimum health - and that some
foods should not be eaten in the same meal or should be included in very small
portions.. With this, he created the
first food pyramid.
Unfortunately for us all, the US
government was more interested in the economy and the revenue obtained from
taxing the profits of food companies.
Food companies are in business to making a profit, not making people
healthy. It’s far cheaper to make foods
out of inexpensive grain crops that are over produced than meat and eggs. It’s for this reason they turned the food
pyramid upside-down and they ended up with highest number of obese citizens per
capita in the world.
Next time you sit down for
breakfast with your corn flakes, remember that the nutritional information on
the side of the box comes from the serving suggestion on the box (that includes
the cup of milk you put in the bowl, the sugar you sprinkle it with, and the
banana or strawberries you put on top), and not actually from the contents of
the box itself. The contents of the box
contain 100% carbohydrate. Seems it may
be healthier to eat the box or just eat the serving suggestion without the corn
flakes.
Later that century, Dr Atkins,
after studying Dr Hay’s work, performed further research, but got a couple of
things wrong by attempting to be politically correct. After all, he had to present his (old) new
diet to the world where pseudo-nutritionists were telling the mass of masses
wanting to lose weight to stave themselves thin, eat only natural foods, eat
mostly carbohydrates, or to eat only vegetables.
These “diet gurus” began telling
young women to only eat 1200 calories or less a day. Unfortunately, according to Dr Hay, the adult
human body requires about 12,000 calories per day.
Food Myths
Diet fads come and go almost
yearly, but proper nutrition is timeless.
Weight Watchers, owned by Heinz
(you know, the baked beans people), make much of their money from their Weight
Watchers food brand sales and their frequent meetings. Why did Heinz buy Weight Watchers? Well, according to Heinz’ in their
stockholder’s meeting at the time, “The diet industry is a license to print
money...”
One of Weight Watchers greatest
product sales is their soda drinks; cola, lemonade, etc. Wanna make a thin kid fat? Feed them soda drinks. The carbon dioxide plays havoc with some
kid’s metabolism and forces the body to produce more cortisone which is the
body’s defense mechanism. Cortisone is
not only the body’s natural pain killer; this hormone is what causes swelling
when you twist your ankle. Like an
aspirin, cortisone blocks the nerve messages to the brain so it doesn’t know
the body has been injured and so doesn’t register pain.
The nervous system is the
electrical system of the body. Since the
child’s electrical system is still being connected, imagine the end result as
giving the wrong instructions to an auto electrician trying to wire a car. He’s bound to connect the wrong wires to the
wrong points or not connect the wires to anything. Result: ADHD.
In some children a chemical in
the soda and the carbon dioxide are seen by the gland as an attack to the body
and acts accordingly. The kids are not
actually fat; they’re bloated, full of air, like the bubbles in the drink.
It has been found that the food
coloring in the sodas (since it’s not actually natural fruit juices), and the
explosive release of the carbon, interferes with the genetic information that
helps form the brain and its attempt to wire the brain correctly. Remember, a human’s brain is not fully formed
and wired until about 24 years of age.
And we wonder why there are so many NRA members and we wonder why
Columbine happened.
A new “diet” raised its ugly head
in the past few years. “The
Mediterranean Diet” stupidly recommends lots of bread, beans and seeds. Dr Javier Menendez of the Northwestern University
Feinberg School of Medicine told Reuters, “We now have something that is able
to explain why the Mediterranean diet is so healthy. Doctors and researchers had been aware that
eating a Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of breast cancer and other
illnesses such as heart disease. But
until now they did not know how”.
It is actually the olive oil
(containing Oleic acid) that reduced the risk of breast cancer and other
illnesses such as heart disease, but the research confirmed it. You can’t live or stay healthy on olive oil
alone. You can pour olive oil over a
tombstone, but it will still be a tombstone.
Foods to be careful of:
Anything low-fat. (especially low-fat dairy foods because the all-important animal fats are taken out)
Unsaturated fats
Polyunsaturated fats
Soy. Unless you’re a woman, since it is a natural source of estrogen. The Louis Pasteur institute in France has found that a continued high dose of soy (over 60ml per day) causes liver damage.
“Enriched” foods
Artificial sweeteners
Corn syrup-sweetened sodas. According to Dr William Douglass, “The rapid increase in blood sugar as a result of drinking a massive dose of corn syrup (the main sweetener in soda) leads to a rapid increase of the insulin secreted by the pancreas into the blood. Ordinarily, insulin will metabolize the extra sugar, bringing the blood sugar back to normal. But if you keep drinking the stuff and placing constant demands on the insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas, eventually the insulin just doesn’t work anymore.
Seeds, such as sunflower seeds. Seeds are not broken down by the body. This false “fiber” is generally one of the main causes of colon cancer. The majority of aged hippies with abdominal problems and even colon cancer, when opened up, in most cases have had a blockage consisting of compacted sunflower seeds and others.
Canola oil. Canola oil goes rancid extremely quickly and cannot be kept at room temperature for long. According to a worker at a major margarine manufacturer, most often the canola oil in canola-based margarines were “cloudy” (meaning it’s gone rancid).
Foods with hormones. These days may foods contain added hormones, such as chickens, meat and even milk. These hormones are added so the animal may reach puberty quicker and grow larger... and so will your child. The devastating effect these added hormones have, especially in girls, is they reach puberty at a much younger age causing physical defects, the worst side effects of these added hormones is the major cause of the majority of breast and ovarian cancers. Buying "Organic" foods is holds no safety against these dangerous foods as the word "Organic" has become a marketing tool and an excuse to over-charge. When tested, at least half of these "organic" and "free-range" foods were genetically modified, processed, contained pesticides, hormones, feces, and even arsenic used in the washing process. You would be better to know exactly where your food came from and make sure your food was grass-fed beef (not grain-fed), actually free range, or grown in your back yard or a market garden. Make friends with a farmer or two and buy from them.
You've heard it said over and
over again: “Meat and fat are bad! They'll
clog your arteries and make you gain ungodly amounts of weight! If you value your life, you'll cut them from
your diet!”
You'd think we were eating food
laced with arsenic the way we’ve been told for the past 20 years to stay away
from eggs, dairy products, and meat. And
undoubtedly, after the millionth time or so, the message starts to sink in. The problem is, all this anti-meat, anti-fat
propaganda is pure junk medicine.
Shed Your Spare Tire In Two
Weeks, Eating Steak And Eggs!
The truth is, you can eat all you
want of the foods you love, lose weight, have more energy, and be healthier. So, go ahead, have a thick steak for dinner. And enjoy your bacon and three-egg omelet for
breakfast!
Humans need the nourishment and
satisfaction of these high-protein, high-fat meals for good health. Forget what you've been told: Contrary to
popular belief, fat does not make you fat! I've seen patients lose 50 pounds or more on a
strict meat and fat diet. The real
problems are the sugar and carbohydrates people eat along with the fat. For true good health, more energy, and real,
permanent weight loss, you need to realign your eating machine, ditch
carbohydrates like pasta salad and bran muffins, and knock sugar off its
pedestal.
The No-Good, Low-Fat Diet
The USDA food pyramid nutrition
recommendations are dead wrong. According
to the food pyramid, carbohydrates should be consumed in greater quantity than
any other nutrient while fat and protein should be consumed in smaller amounts.
But there's proof that the pyramid needs
to be reversed!
The popular trend of “carb
loading”—stuffing yourself with bread, pasta, fruit, potatoes, etc is not the
booster of health and athletic performance it has been made out to be. A study performed in South Africa showed that
cyclists following a diet that included only 7 percent carbs could pedal twice
as long as those on a 74 percent carb diet.
A Brazilian study found that
increasing protein intake and decreasing carbohydrate intake increased energy
and gave a definite nutritional and biochemical advantage to exercising rats. Rats receiving a high-protein diet had energy
levels over three times as high as those of control groups and groups of rats
placed on high-carb diets.
Why Does Eating More Protein
And Fewer Carbs Actually Help You?
By stripping carbohydrates from
your diet, you will experience dramatic weight loss (even if other diets never worked
for you), never be hungry, and improve your health, while continuing to eat and
enjoy the foods you need to be healthy.
When we eat carbohydrates
(breads, starches, and simple sugars), our bodies easily absorb them and
convert them into glucose in our blood—thus raising our blood-sugar levels. As a result, the hormone insulin is then
produced to convert the glucose into fuel to run the body. However, when insulin appears on the scene to
tell the body to burn glycogen, it also tells it to stop burning fat, and it
stuffs the fat back into storage. And
you know what it looks like there!
In addition, if you consume more
carbs than you need for immediate energy, insulin converts the glucose into
fat, and puts this into storage as well. The glucose builds up day after day in your
arteries (and in that spare tire) until your circulation is blocked, your
tissues don't get nourished, and you end up with obesity, high blood pressure,
cholesterol buildup, diabetes, heart disease, fatigue, impotence, or even
cancer.
A diet based on meat and animal
fats stabilizes blood-sugar levels and turns your body from a sluggish
carbohydrate burner into a fat-burning machine. It delivers the metabolic edge you need to
protect yourself from the life-threatening conditions mentioned above. And it does so on the strength of protein!
Eat Fat, Get Thin
As early as 1960, nutritionists
noticed that the body uses stores of body fat—as opposed to carbohydrate fuel—for
energy when carbohydrates are restricted.
They were surprised by their patients' weight loss even in the presence
of large amounts of dietary fat.
In a 1963 landmark weight-loss
study, Dr. A. Keswick and G.L.S. Pawan, of London's Middlesex Hospital Medical
School, found that mice on a high-protein (carb-restricted) diet used their own
fat stores as fuel and lost weight, while mice on a high-carb diet used the
carb’s sugary fuel as energy and kept their fat (Metabolism, 1964).
Flying in the face of
contemporary wisdom, which says that a diet rich in fats increases your risk of
colorectal cancer, Belgian researchers found that the risk of rectal cancer was
doubled not by fats but by a high-carbohydrate diet.
They studied the eating habits,
particularly fat intake, of over 3,500 subjects (Nutrition and Cancer, 1987).
Even the control group had a higher
incidence of cancer than the group on a high-fat diet!
A Low Fat Diet Can Endanger
Your Heart
A study reported in the Journal
of the American Medical Association showed that aggressively restricting
your fat intake may do more harm than good.
The study looked at 444 men who had high levels of LDL (“bad”
cholesterol). Many of the participants
also had high levels of triglycerides, another indicator of bad heart health.
These men were separated into
four groups, with the overall daily caloric intake from dietary fat being 30
percent, 26 percent, 22 percent, or 18 percent. Tests done one year later showed those on the
least restrictive diet actually saw their LDL levels drop more than those on
the other three regimens.
The more restrictive diets showed
no additional benefit in other areas of health, such as weight, blood sugar,
insulin, or blood-pressure levels. In
fact, the two most restrictive diets ended up causing a decrease in HDL (“good”
cholesterol) and an increase in triglyceride levels. All that self-denial, and these poor guys were
worse off than when they started.
Want To Lose Weight? Have Another Cup Of Real Java
A recent study indicates that
caffeine, when combined with carnitine and choline, decreases body fat and
serum-leptin (blood fat) levels at a rate similar to mild exercise. While supplementing with this combination
won't improve your cardiovascular fitness, it could give you that extra edge if
you're trying to lose weight. If you
need to reduce your triglyceride levels, then these three supplements will give
you another advantage, as the study participants had significantly reduced
triglyceride levels, whether they exercised or not (Journal of Nutrition 2000;
130(2): 152-7).
Diabetic? Have A Steak
I get a lot of flack for
advocating red meat, but researchers at Purdue
University and Penn State
have found that fat in red meats and cheeses may prevent diabetes.
Their study found that conjugated
linoleic acid (CLA), a polyunsaturated fatty acid found in meat, cheese,
poultry, and eggs, prevents the onset of diabetes in laboratory animals. This suggests that CLA may help normalize or
reduce blood-glucose levels and prevent diabetes. The researchers say that natural CLA appears
to work as well as a new class of diabetes-fighting drugs, the
thiazolidinediones (TZDs).
The research was conducted on a
special breed of rat called the Zucker diabetic fatty rat, whose obesity and
glucose intolerance mimics human adult-onset diabetes (also called type II, or
noninsulin-dependent diabetes, the most common form of diabetes). The rats were given doses of CLA for two
weeks. At the end of the experiment, all
of the control rats had developed diabetes and none of the rats on CLA had
developed the disease.
Previous studies with CLA have
shown that it can prevent the onset of certain cancers and reduce skin and
stomach tumors in laboratory animals.
CLA is available as a dietary
supplement in health food stores, but you should be advised that there is no
toxicology data for it yet. A small
percentage of thiazolidinedione patients have reported liver abnormalities, and
human trials on CLA's effect on diabetes are set to begin soon.
Putting Some Specific Foods
Under The Nutrition Microscope
Now that I've cleared up some of
the misconceptions about the macronutrients-proteins, fats, and carbohydrates—I'd
like to tell you the REAL truth about some specific foods you've been told were
bad for you.
Coconut Oil-A Perfect Food
Thirty years ago, the saturated
fat vs. unsaturated fat debacle began—and coconut oil was cast out with the
rest of the saturated fats as health-destroying scourges. But the fact of the matter is that saturated
fats, including coconut oil, are good for you. It's actually the unsaturated oils that do the
most harm, causing cancer, heart disease, and obesity. Rather than contributing to excess weight,
coconut oil has the unique ability to keep you lean.
Over 50 years ago, farmers began
looking for a cheaper way to fatten their livestock. Coconut oil seemed an obvious choice, being
much cheaper than grain, and since it was a type of fat, they figured that it
made for fatter cows. Much to their
surprise and dismay, the coconut-oil-fed animals stayed lean, despite the fact
that they consumed as much as, if not more than, grain-fed cows.
While skinny cows don't make for
happy cattle farmers, thinner people make for a healthier population, and
coconut oil can help achieve that. In
addition to helping control weight, natural coconut oil acts as an
antihistamine and also has anti-diabetic and anti-cancer properties.
And perhaps the best thing about
coconut oil (as if all this weren't enough)? It has an amazing shelf life: It can be left
at room temperature for over a year without becoming rancid!
Beer—Toast To Your Health
The health benefits of beer are
enormous. While it's composed mostly of
water and alcohol, beer is often called “the complete food”. It has a wide range of amino acids, proteins,
polypeptides, and minerals, including potassium, magnesium, manganese, zinc,
and copper.
The substances that give beer its
unique bitter taste are called hops, which are credited with delivering a
soothing, sedating, and therapeutic effect. In moderate quantities, beer can actually aid
your digestive system, help your body transport water, decrease stress, and
benefit your heart. There's even new
evidence that shows beer can help protect you against cancer.
Oregon State
researchers discovered that an antioxidant found in beer may be especially
potent. Antioxidants have been linked to
protective effects against atheroscelerosis, cancer, aging, Parkinson's
disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Though
these findings need to be studied further, it can't hurt to enjoy your frosty
mug in the meantime!
And here’s even better news. You can forget about the myth that beer makes
you fat. Beer is 93 percent water,
contains no sugar or fat, and has only low levels of additives. Men with big pot bellies are .the minority. And although there is speculation that drinking
beer stimulates your appetite don't let this “infrequent overindulgence” keep
you from enjoying it!
If you want more information,
there is an excellent Web site called The Real Beer Page (no affiliation with Dr.
Douglass' Real Health Breakthroughs).
You can find it at
www.realbeer.com. Besides containing
loads of useful information itself, the site has links to over 150,000 pages of
home-brewing splendor and a complete subculture dedicated to brewing and
drinking beer.
Getting The Most From The
Foods You Eat
In the 1930s, Dr. Paul
Kouchakoff, a researcher at the Institute
of Clinical Chemistry,
studied how cooked foods affect our bodies.
Dr. Kouchakoff found that the higher the food's temperature, the greater
the body's immune response. In other
words, our bodies react to cooked foods the same way they react to foreign
invaders: They release more white blood cells.
Conversely, Dr. Kouchakoff's
research showed that when people ingested food that hadn't been processed or
cooked, their bodies did not respond.
Overcooking foods causes a
breakdown in their nutrient value and structure, which either nullifies the
benefits they have on our systems, or turns them into substances unrecognizable
to the body, which, in turn, elicits an immune response.
For example, when meat is
overcooked, the vitamin B6 it contains is destroyed or inactivated. Vitamin B6 plays a crucial role in converting
homocysteine into an amino acid that can help rather than harm your body. If you overcook meat, you break down the
vitamin B6 and, in essence, put yourself at risk for heart disease.
To avoid this breakdown, and the
breakdown of other foods’ nutrient values, all foods should be cooked at a
temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit or less.
This may not always be possible, but according to Dr. Kouchakoff's
research, when raw foods were eaten along with cooked foods, the immune
response was neutral. So eat raw salad
or vegetables along with-not before-cooked meat to ensure that you lessen the
potential damage of overcooked foods.
The Truth About Salt
Talk about scare tactics-the
high-blood-pressure Gestapo is working to convince us that the slightest shake
of salt on our food is going to send us to an early grave. They’re recommending daily intake quantities
that are likely to rob every ounce of flavor from the food we enjoy. Don't stand for it!
Salt, or, more accurately,
sodium, is a vital mineral in the human diet. It is the main component of the body's
extracellular fluids and carries nutrients to and from cells. Sodium also causes the body to retain water
that is needed to perform numerous chemical processes, maintains blood pH, and
helps regulate muscle, nerve, and stomach functions.
Several studies have proven the
benefits of dietary salt. In the spring
of 1995, a report on the results of a four-year study suggested a link between
a low-salt diet and higher risk of heart attack. It was published in Hypertension, a
journal of the American Heart Association.
Inconclusive results, found by
researchers at the University
of Toronto (after
studying the effect of sodium on blood pressure in 3,505 subjects) suggest that
there is a need to reevaluate the entire concept of low-sodium diets. In light of emerging evidence that a
low-sodium diet may actually be harmful to some individuals, the researchers
said, the objective of universal dietary sodium restrictions should be
reevaluated.
The former president of the
American Heart Association, Dr. Suzanne Oparil, agrees. Her personal view is that the government may
have been too quick to recommend that everyone cut back. “Salt restriction as a solitary
recommendation for the population for the prevention or treatment of
hypertension is not a powerful weapon and is probably not worth the trouble”,
she said. According to Oparil, the link
between high blood pressure and sodium intake first surfaced about 50 years ago—when
studies indicated that hypertension was rare in countries with low-salt diets. But salt isn't the only factor in blood
pressure levels. So long as you are
getting enough calcium, potassium, and magnesium, there's no apparent reason to
cut back on salt unless, of course, you just don't like it.
Today, some researchers believe
that low-salt diets may actually be dangerous. One theory holds that people with high blood
pressure are at greater risk for heart attacks if their kidneys produce excess
levels of the enzyme renin. A low-salt
diet causes renin levels to increase.
The only salt worthy of your
consideration is sea salt from a clean seabed. Don't be fooled: If the label says, “U.S. crude salt”
it doesn't mean the contents are pure. Crude
salt is unrefined industrial salt. It
may be, unrefined, but it has been mined from a source that is most likely
heavily contaminated with heavy metals. Sea
salt is the only option.
To be a sea salt worthy of your
family, it must meet all three of the following criteria:
1) The salt will not be the
snow-white variety you're used to. It should be light gray in color. After sitting for a time, the color at the
bottom of the container will be darker. If
the salt is crystal white, it may be sea salt but it has been treated and
fractionated to rid it of impurities and, at the same time, this rids it of
essential minerals. If it is not light
gray, it is not a nutritious salt.
2) Legitimate sea salt is not dry
to the touch. It should be a little
soggy. The moistness is due to the
presence of magnesium salts. When kept
in cool storage, it doesn't dry out.
3) The crystals, under
magnification, are small and cubic.
Finding pure sea salt can be
rather difficult.
There are plenty of
products out there claiming to be "pure" but, unfortunately, they
have almost all been tampered with to some degree.
I have only been able to find one source that
I trust—The Grain and Salt Society in
Ashville,
North Carolina.
They can be reached at (800) 867-7258 or on
the Internet at
www.celtic-seasalt.com.
The Healing Power Of Hot
Peppers
Even if you don't like fiery-hot
foods, you should spice up your diet with some chilies. Capsaicin, the extract that is the main
ingredient in the hottest hot sauces on the shelves today, is so full of good
stuff it's no wonder someone bottled it.
Capsaicin is an antioxidant and
an anti-inflammatory, chockfull of vitamins and beta-carotene. Hot peppers contain calcium, phosphorus, iron,
potassium, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), and niacin (B3). They contain more vitamin C than oranges, and
they lose only about a third of that after cooking.
In 1982, a study found that
chilies thin the blood and lower blood pressure. They also—hold on to your fajita—lower the
blood level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), the cause of
arteriosclerosis. And unlike so many
anti-cholesterol agents, they act on the bad cholesterol without affecting the
good variety (HDL).
Better yet, a 1986 study
published by the American Institute of Nutrition demonstrated that capsaicin
reduces the amount of stored fat (triglycerides) in blood cells and reduces
blood triglyceride levels.
You'd think that chilies would
harm the lining of the stomach, but, in fact, the opposite is true. A 1995 medical study at the National University
Hospital in Singapore found that orally
administered capsaicin has a gastro-protective effect when followed by 600
milligrams of aspirin.
This increased intestinal
activity may aid digestion by increasing circulation, allowing food to be
processed and absorbed more efficiently.
